


your lying eyes

by thunderylee



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Canon Universe, M/M, fooling around at a questionable age, member whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-03
Updated: 2009-05-03
Packaged: 2019-02-01 20:07:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12712053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderylee/pseuds/thunderylee
Summary: Fromthentonow, it’s been them against the world.





	your lying eyes

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from agck.

_My oh my, you sure know how to arrange things_  
You set it up so well, so carefully  
Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things?  
You’re still the same old girl you used to be  
~ The Eagles :: Your Lyin’ Eyes

“I don’t understand you,” Nakamaru says firmly, looking Jin in the eyes because he owes him at least that much. “But I’m on your side.”

Jin sucks his lips into his mouth, an actual reaction instead of just putting on a show, and bows his head just enough to be noticeable.

“I’ll see you again,” he says, his voice cracking as he offers a sad smile and quickly turns on his heel, disappearing into the airport crowd without looking back.

::

The third time Ueda made the youngest member of their new junior unit cry, Maru made the executive decision to get involved. He didn’t join Johnny’s to be miserable, and he’s pretty sure that none of them did either.

Koki helped, and together they formed an impromptu comedy duo that kept Ueda calm (albeit rolling his eyes) and Kame’s face dry.

Eight years later, Kame can’t keep from smiling every time TaNaka make a stupid joke, even if nobody sees it.

::

“I’m proud of you,” Jin says, playing with his fingers like he’s uncomfortable.

Maru finishes writing his subjects clearly on the front of his shiny new notebooks and tries not to grin too hard. “Thanks.”

“I’m sure your teachers will be better,” Jin goes on, pausing to clear his throat, “but if you need any English help, I’ll do it.”

“I will,” Maru tells him. “My English is not good at all, and it’s been a long time since high school.”

“I will help you,” Jin says in English, looking more confident than any other time he’s had to speak it in front of a camera. “Because I believe in you.”

That makes Maru feel a lot more motivated than “so KAT-TUN won’t be the stupid group anymore.”

::

Kame was sniffling again, but this time his eyes were big and concerned. “Nakamaru-kun,” he whispered, “come quick!”

With a hurried apology, Maru abandoned his card game with the older juniors and followed the middle-schooler outside, around the corner to where the trash cans were lined up, almost hiding a shaking Jin.

“Taguchi-kun hit him,” Kame said frantically. “I don’t know what to do – usually he’s the one taking care of me.”

Jin’s breath hitched and Maru was amazed at how fast he got to him. “I told you not to tell, Kame!” Jin yelled through his hands, which were cradling his busted lip and a bruised jaw.

He looked up at Maru and cringed, like Maru was going to hit him too, and at that second Maru vowed to do everything in his power to keep from having to see this face again.

Now, as Maru watches the grown up Jin primp in the mirror, he feels partially responsible for the beautiful one’s perfect complexion, even if the other knows it a little too well.

It’s still a good feeling.

::

“It’s great to get away, isn’t it?” Ueda says happily, leaning the seat back because there’s nobody behind him on the train. “Those guys drive me crazy sometimes.”

Maru snorts and closes his eyes, trying to relax now that the stress of Tokyo and work is getting further and further behind them. “They’re not so bad,” he mumbles.

“You would say that,” Ueda chides. “You’re like the parent the kids go to when the other, stricter parent says no.”

The corners of Maru’s lips turn up in amusement. “Does that make you the mean one?”

Ueda doesn’t answer, and when he finally speaks again it’s a long, content sigh. “That cloud looks like a turtle.”

Maru peeks an eye open and sees the lavender fields in the distance, along with the mountains slowly swallowing up the sunset in the background. “The sky is awfully red tonight.”

At the hotel, there’s a bible in the drawer and their room is right by the exit sign; Ueda’s amusement does not go unnoticed, but he doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t have to.

::

Maru watched Kame, Jin, and Yamapi play in the water, trying his best to not be jealous. Takki had always favored the three of them, and Maru wondered why management didn’t just make a junior unit out of them. Akamepi was a cute name, he thought.

“Yucchi!” Kame shrieked, rushing to hide behind Maru when Yamapi and Jin teamed up to splash him. “Save me!”

A giant wave of water crashed into Maru’s face instead of Kame’s, leaving the eldest wiping his eyes and sternly looking down at the gangly teenager and the small, popular one with the baby face.

“Nakamaru-kun looks confused,” Yamapi pointed out, peering into Maru’s nose as he examined the other’s expression. “Did you get water in your brain?”

“Stupid,” Jin muttered, pulling Yamapi back. “You can’t get water in your brain. You’ll _die_.”

“Nuh-uh,” Yamapi shot back. “You can too get water in your brain, _Baka_ nishi.”

In response, Jin splashed him. Yamapi splashed back and a splashing war broke out amongst all of the juniors in a fifty-foot radius, who stopped what they were doing and automatically split up between Team Jin and Team Pi.

Predictably, Kame stayed hidden behind Maru, who received the brunt of it in the face from _both_ sides while the photographers kept snapping pictures and marveling over how _natural_ the youngsters were.

When Maru felt the sand under his feet again, Jin was pressing a towel to his face and giving him an accusatory look. “You were on my team, right?”

“Of course,” Maru replied.

Jin grinned and made Maru’s hair stick straight up.

::

“I think that’s the last of it,” Maru says, breath heaving as he places the box on the floor as carefully as he can.

Meanwhile, Jin’s dancing around his new living room, and Maru only laughs a little bit when he trips over an open box and nearly falls on his face.

He ends up on his back on the ugly shag carpet, where Maru quickly joins him and elbows him until he scoots over.

“I feel so grown up,” Jin says as he stretches.

“You’ll never grow up,” Maru teases him, nudging him again and again until the younger is squirming beside him. “I give it three months before you move back home.”

“You give me that long?” Jin scoffs. “That’s _three times_ I have to remember to pay rent!”

“That’s not what I mean,” Maru says, and lets it go when he sees Jin distracted by the ceiling fan.

Jin seems in a rush to get rid of him, to be alone in his new home, but Maru’s just as desperate to get home and take a shower before his sisters fight over the bathroom.

Not two hours later, Maru’s phone goes off. He picks it up without looking, listens to Jin whine about being bored as he gets ready to leave, and hangs up at the same moment he lets himself into the apartment he’d just left not long ago.

“I’m not lonely,” Jin says firmly, holding a pillow to his chest as he sits on the floor because he doesn’t have any furniture.

“Okay,” Maru replies simply, plopping down next to him and reaching over to maneuver the rabbit ears on the TV.

He can feel Jin’s smile on the back of his neck, returning one of his own when Jin asks him what he should make for dinner.

::

Jin didn’t really smoke, just held Koki’s cigarette because it made him look cool.

“Ah,” Maru said suddenly, instantly covering up his mouth because he wasn’t in the best company for this discovery.

“What, what?” Jin asked deviously, ashing the stick as soon as Koki gave it back to him.

Maru tried to avert his eyes, but Jin had already followed his gaze. “A girl? Were you checking out a _girl_ , Yucchi?”

“Shh!” Maru hissed, his face turning red. “I go to school with her. She just… she looks different, is all.”

“She looks _hot_ ,” Koki inputted, and Maru immediately turned to him with a _don’t you fucking dare_ look.

Jin chuckled. “Why don’t you go talk to her? You’re a Johnny’s Junior, that should impress her enough to let you in her pants.”

Koki laughed and Maru gaped, the former looking like he was going to give the other a hard time until Jin snatched the almost-finished butt from Koki’s lips and put it out in the ashtray that they were huddled around. “You’re out of smokes,” he said pointedly.

Blowing his bangs out of his face, Koki snuck around the corner and lingered around the cigarette machine until he was sure that nobody was looking.

Meanwhile, Jin grabbed Maru by the coat and leaned close enough so that _Maru_ could barely hear him, let alone anyone else. “You haven’t been with anyone, have you?”

Embarrassed, Maru shook his head.

“Not even kissed?” Jin asked, looking amazed.

Maru got one more head shake in before Koki came back and Jin pretended to be fixing Maru’s hair. Thankfully he let it go, at least until they split up for the night and Jin ended up knocking on Maru’s window just before he was about to go to bed.

“You can use the front door, you know,” Maru said as he helped him climb inside.

“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” Jin replied in a rush, quickly removing his shoes before his feet touched the floor. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“O-okay,” Maru sputtered, his eyes growing round as Jin approached him and bypassed the entire rest of Maru’s bed in favor of crawling straight into his lap.

Maru wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands, but it seemed like something good to focus on to keep him distracted from Jin _straddling his thighs_. He finally looked up to see Jin staring at him intently, licking his lips before taking a giant breath.

“Don’t be scared,” Jin whispered in a voice that was neither steady nor comforting; in fact it made Maru even _more_ nervous when Jin made to grab for his face and lean in.

His body tried to jump out of his skin when Jin’s lips touched his, but then he relaxed considerably because Jin had unusually soft lips and gentle fingers that slid back behind his ears and rubbed at a pressure point he didn’t know he had.

It ended as quickly as it had begun, but Jin didn’t pull very far away. “Okay?”

Maru nodded, too dazed to notice anything other than that Jin’s breath smelled strongly of peppermint, like he’d just eaten one on his way over.

He wondered if Jin tasted minty too, their noses bumping as he leaned in to find out without any warning. Jin chuckled as he invitingly parted his lips for Maru, making Maru seek out Jin’s tongue and jump again when he found it.

The next thing he knew, his back was hitting the mattress and Jin was hovering over him, keeping his distance and Maru had a pretty good idea why if the tightness of his own pajama pants was any indication. His hands grasped at Jin’s belt loops, trembling from the force to stop himself from pulling him closer, the natural order of things seeming to win over anything else.

Finally Jin tore himself away, looking like it pained him to do so as he pressed his face into Maru’s neck and breathed heavily. “So that’s how you do it,” he panted.

“Don’t stop,” Maru whispered before he was actually aware that he’d said anything.

Jin leaned up and Maru cringed, wishing that a hole would come and swallow him up in his own room, but then Jin didn’t move and slowly Maru opened his eyes to see the younger staring down at him with a flushed face and swollen lips.

“This isn’t going to help you with girls,” Jin said, still breathless.

Maru blinked. “That’s okay.”

He’d never admit it at the time as well as later on, but girls were the farthest thing from his mind.

::

“Let’s work well together,” Koichi says, grinning like nothing had happened between them and Maru’s just another supporting actor on the drama set.

Nodding, Maru resolves to think the same way.

Filming is uneventful until they have a night off and Koichi takes him out for a drink, just the two of them. As expected, the lightweight senpai brings up the past, and Maru’s looking around for an escape route until he actually hears the words that are slurring from Koichi’s lips.

“That Akanishi,” he’s saying fondly. “He turned into quite an adult, didn’t he?”

“Yes?” Maru replies, sounding just as surprised as he is.

“He still needs some work,” Koichi goes on, chuckling drunkenly, “but overall he’s become an idol _and_ an adult whom I can be proud of.”

“From Koichi-kun’s guidance-” Maru starts.

“Not me!” Koichi dismisses firmly. “I gave up on him long before he even fell.”

Maru meets his eyes, sees the pointed look, and returns to examining his watered-down drink. “Impossible.”

“All we need to succeed,” Koichi says grandly, “is someone who believes in us.”

The truth crashes hard on Maru, making him physically sway on the barstool as memories float behind his unfocused eyes along with the present time, seeing for himself the Jin of now whom he’s partially responsible for.

He’s brought back to reality by a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes we have to step back and let people grow up on their own, even if it hurts. They will take life for granted if they know that there will be someone to catch them if they fall.”

Maru opens his mouth to protest, point out the contradiction of those statements, but Koichi beats him to it.

“The best support one can give is from a distance.”

Maru thinks about the others in his group, his friends in other groups, even people in his personal life, _all_ of whom he would have tried to stop from walking away from their obligations, their dreams, _him_.

“He’s not the only one I’m proud of, you know,” Koichi goes on, and Maru has to close his eyes to hold back his emotions.

Clearly he’s had too much to drink.

::

The doorbell rings and Maru quickly swallows his mouthful, excusing himself from the table to answer the door.

He stands there for almost a full minute, almost letting Mister outside and almost questioning his eyesight as Jin stands before him, soaked from the rain and looking a lot less confident than when they’d had that awkward meeting in New York.

“I told you I’d see you again,” Jin says, offering a quirky smile that makes Maru feel seventeen all over again.

“Does anyone else know-”

Jin’s head shaking cuts him off, only because the too-long strands of hair streak his shirt with water. “I’ve already been lectured enough, I didn’t want…” He takes a breath. “I wanted to see someone who would be happy to see me.”

Mister does end up sneaking out when Maru lunges forward to throw both arms around Jin, but the little dog just barks around the pair of them and seems unconcerned about running into the street for the time being.

Maru’s soaked too, but it’s a small price to pay to feel Jin’s smile again.

::

“Kanpai!” Koki screeches, swinging the newly popped champagne bottle around so that the fizz is distributed evenly amongst the six of them. “Congratulations, Tat-chan!”

Jin wipes some of the fizz from his eye and folds his arms at Koki. “What’s so impressive about being in a drama? He’s had a stageplay _and_ a solo concert!”

“What’s so _impressive_ ,” Koki responds, pointing at Jin with the bottle opener, “is that now all six of us are actors.”

“Being in a drama doesn’t make you an actor,” Junno pipes up, meeting Jin’s eyes over Koki’s head to signal some kind of conspiracy. “Kissing a girl in a drama makes you an actor!”

“Ah,” Koki says, clapping his hand to his forehead. “I forgot.”

“Wait!” Kame jumps in, staring smugly at Maru. “Nakamaru didn’t kiss in his drama, did he?”

Maru hides his eyeroll, seeing where this is going. “No, I did not.”

“I don’t think I will be either,” Ueda informs everyone. “Although with the kind of character I’m playing, maybe that’s a good thing.”

“But you kissed in your stageplay,” Junno points out, returning everyone’s attention back to Maru.

“I hardly think Akanishi’s counts!” Maru retaliates, but even he knows it’s a lost cause.

“How sad,” Kame teases. “The oldest of the group has the least experience.”

“Maybe he’s a bad kisser,” Junno suggests, using Jin’s shoulder as an armrest.

“I am _not_ a bad kisser!” Maru declares, egging them on.

Jin joins in on the taunting, but it only takes a brief second of their eyes meeting to tell Maru that yes, he remembers, and yes, he definitely doesn’t agree with anything that’s coming out of his mouth.

It keeps Maru’s head held high while the others pick on him like they’ve done for years. Like he lets them do, because watching them bond together is worth any embarrassing thing that happens to him.

“You can be the mean one sometimes too,” Ueda hisses from the side, already swaying from his half-empty flute while the others jovially discuss how Maru is probably still a virgin. “Why do you let them rag on you like this?”

Maru looks over at Kame’s comfortable posture, Junno’s confident attitude, Koki’s enthusiasm, even Ueda’s caring nature… and Jin, in the middle of them all, laughing and having a good time right where he belongs.

“Just doing my part,” he mumbles, trying to keep his voice from cracking at how happy he is despite the constant torture, but Ueda’s already grown bored of him and utilized Kame’s shoulder as a pillow while the youngest loudly lectures the entire room on proper drama kissing etiquette, demonstrating on the back of his hand.

It doesn’t matter what Maru thinks anyway; some things are better left unsaid.

**Author's Note:**

> – The timeline is supposed to be back-and-forth; past tense is pre-debut and present tense is after. With the exception of the very first and very last scenes, they also get closer to that time as you go on.  
> – It is public fact that Kame and Ueda used to brawl, and Junno and Jin got into fistfights.  
> – Kame and Koki have both stated that they wanted to leave KAT-TUN in the beginning, and I actually think I read somewhere that five out of the six of them admitted to it in some game where nobody could tell who answered what.  
> – Koki stated during his SCP that KT-TUN met up with Jin in NYC (they were there for something else) to decide whether to let him come back or not.  
> – KAT-TUN backdanced for Domoto Koichi when they first started out, and while I will not spread rumors that may or may not be true, the main speculation is that they did not part ways on good terms; _however_ , Koichi did come to one of their concerts last summer and he was very civil to Jin. Although as of this writing, KAT-TUN remain the only debuted group to not have _ever_ guested on Domoto Kyoudai.  
>  – Maru and Ueda were teased in some TV appearance for a trip they took a couple years ago to the Lavender Fields, where they shared a hotel room and were all BFFy.  
> – In the Lavender Fields scene, the turtle represents Kame, the red represents Jin, the exit sign (deguchi) is part of Junno’s corny intro, and the first kanji in the Japanese word for bible (seisho) is Koki’s first name.  
> – To my knowledge, Nakamaru really is the only KAT-TUN member who hasn’t kissed on screen or stage.  
> – Everything else is made up.


End file.
